Monday, 3 October 2016

The Hollies "What Goes Around..." (1983)

Casualty/Take My Love and Run/Say You'll Be Mine/Something Ain't
Right/If The Lights Go Out//Stop! In The Name Of Love/I Got What I Want/Just
One Look/Someone Else's Eyes/Having A Good Time

'I
can't guarantee a happy ending while the story is always unwinding, but in the
here and now it doesn't matter, 'cause I'm having a good time!'

Graham Nash once called The Hollies his musical
'school' before he went out into the big wide world with CSN. Well, 'What Goes
Around...' is his school reunion, with all sides doing what people always do at
school reunions: pretend to be something they're not. The Hollies haven't
really been a 'pop' band in years (their last hit single was 'The Air That I
Breathe' in 1974 and a song with such depth and poignancy is hardly typical
teenybopper material), since around when Graham left the band in fact. For his
part Graham has spent the past fifteen years being teased by his new bandmates
in Crosby, Stills and Nash for his popstar leanings and trying to pretend that
The Hollies were an aberration and he was always a writer of deep political
songs. As it happens there's very little divide between who The Hollies and the
ex-Hollie were in 1983; but by the same token there's a huge gulf between who
both halves were at the time with who they'd been when they started. And yet
turning the clock back to where things started is the whole point of this
unusual reunion album, which doesn't so much pick up where the band last left
off together as pretend that none of the intervening years since 1983 have
taken place at all. 'What goes around' comes around as they say - and you can
tell, just by hearing this album, that's it's a meeting between old friends on
holiday, rather than a determined effort to extend The Hollies' career with
Nash as a full member. The saga will end the way that most school reunions do,
at least in trashy romance novels: Nash gets frustrated, mouths off to everyone
that the experience 'reminded him why I stopped being a Hollie in the first
place' and he ends up running with the band's new 'partner', young writer Paul
Bliss who is the real hero of this album (and who Nash pinches from under his
exes' nose with promises of running away together in America, though in the end
Graham's next solo album 'Innocent Eyes' isn't exactly the fame and glory he
promised and their union doesn't last much longer before Paul Bliss joins The
Moody Blues instead, wasting his writing talents as second keyboard player). What
do you mean this didn't happen at your school reunion?!

To be fair, most of this move backwards is
deliberate. By 1983 The Hollies have had a rough few years commercially and
have been quietly persuaded by EMI not to release any more record for the
moment (Nash helped get this album released as part of a one-off album deal
with WEA). But then so has Graham: while The Hollies have been slogging away
making an album most years since the parting of the ways in 1968 (thirteen
studio albums in fourteen years), his next band CSN have split up no less than
four times and counting with Crosby so poorly from his drug addiction that Nash
was, at the time, adamant that the trio would never ever play together again
(Crosby is, indeed, merely months away from a prison sentence). Neither side
are big news in music terms - but nostalgia is. It's been twenty years since
'She Loves You yeah yeah yeah', the world is gearing up for a blitz of
nostalgia involving every Beatles single being re-released on vinyl on the
actual anniversary date and suddenly people are talking about the 1960s as a
commodity to be reminded of rather than as the root of current music trends.
The Hollies were still, rightly or wrongly, seen by the public as a pop singles
act who covered trendy music by current fashionable writers. That's exactly
what the record company wanted and - after three years without a record and
nine without a hit - The Hollies were willing to give it a try. 'What Goes
Around' is therefore the inevitable result - a pop album from a band who were always
best at meaningful rock, made up entirely of covers despite the fact that the
band featured three of the greatest writers to have ever graced the planet and
with a production that's as earnestly 1980s as The Hollies had always been
gloriously 1960s. It's frankly a waste
of their time and yours, with almost nothing of what had made The Hollies stand
out in popular music: the harmonies, the guitarwork (there are actually more
Tony Hicks solos than I remember now I've heard this album again, but all of
them are short and a lot of them are dull), even the bouncy optimism and energy
of their younger days. Instead The Hollies sound like every other 1980s pop
band, albeit one that could still actually sing and knew a great tune when they
heard it, with their usual strong ears for cover material. In many ways it's a
huge improvement on what the band were doing last time around, which was
covering Buddy Holly songs on, erm, 'Buddy Holly' and the band's brief work
with Mike Batt (which resulted in the classic half-hit single 'Soldier's Song',
their 1980s masterpiece, but also a whole pile of generic pop songs The Hollies
should never have gone anywhere near). But it also falls far short of what it
could have been, had the Clarke-Hicks-Nash songwriting team gone back to
writing songs together from their new shared older, maturer perspective or had they
been determined to completely grab hold of the 1960s nostalgia and sound the
way they always did, without any sop to period trappings.

Or, indeed, had they actually all started work at
the same time for the history of how this album came about is quite a complex
and convoluted one. Back in 1980, when The Hollies still had a regular record
contract and were still hoping for sales in their own right, Graham Nash was
the last person you'd have pout money on to join the band; indeed you'd have
probably got better odds over David Bowie becoming a Bowhollie or Holly Johnson
leaving Frannkie Goes To Hollywood to be a Hollie (both bands recorded songs
titled 'Relax' after all). But in 1981 The Hollies have split, painfully. The
Mike Batt sessions were hard going, The Hollies feeling as if they were being
patronised by a man several years their junior (and whose biggest hits till now
had been via the rabbits of 'Watership Down' or men dressed up as Wombles.
Hopefully in some alternate universe somewhere the band took off his biggest
hit and replied in earnest 'Remember we're The Hollies' every time the producer
threatened to replace them). Mike Batt particularly didn't like Bernie
Calvert's bass playing and rubbished him at every opportunity, replacing him
with session players (despite the fact that he remains one of the best bass
players to come out of the 1960s). Bernie was distraught and Terry Sylvester
spoke up on his behalf, arguing that the material was 'stupid' and a band with
a following like The Hollies (with more top twenty hits than The Beatles
don'tchaknow) deserved to at least have a say in the music they made. But The
Hollies needed this last gasp chance too badly to agree, splitting down the
middle with Bernie retiring to Runcorn and Terry splitting to form James
Griffin-Terry Sylvester to earn his 'bread' and butter. The Hollies are almost
split in half and though the band quickly find a harmony singer/rhythm
guitarist replacement in Alan Coates (the star of many a late 1980s live show)
and though they have recording sessions lined up for 1981-1982 (paid for out of
their own money, with the hope they could get a record deal at the end of it
all), they're happy to take any olive branch offered them, including Graham.
From his point of view Graham's career is in freefall too and with CSN gone
forever (or so it seems) a Hollies record actually seems like a good career
move.

The first meeting comes most unexpectedly when some
bright spark at EMI noticed how well the recent 'Stars On 45' tribute To The
Beatles has gone down and figures 'we could do another one of those!',
stringing together two medleys of Hollie hits remixed and re-edited to a new
backing track of ugly 1980s drums. 'Holliedaze' and it's B-side 'Holliepops' do
surprisingly well in the chart despite the fact that The Hollies aren't
actively promoting them and the single becomes the band's biggest seller since
'Breathe'. The Hollies get an invite to appear on Top Of The Pops, the music
show about to celebrate its own 20th anniversary soon after the band's own and
- as per the usual rules - the people who actually appeared on the record got
the invitation. People were most surprised when Graham said 'yes' from his
beach-house in Hawaii to return to rainy Manchester but the timing just
happened to be fortunate with the singer between projects; original bass player
Eric Haydock turned up too, but sadly didn't hang around for any longer (the
others were still involved in a court case where he presented his own band as
variations on 'The Hollies'). Graham asked the band what they were up to, they
told him they had a bunch of songs ready to go and even had a few backing
tracks down despite losing their contract with EMI. Somebody (probably Tony)
invited Graham to hang out and add a few harmony vocals; a few weeks later he'd
sung on the whole album (and nicked the band's keyboardist/chief writer in the
process!) In the end Graham gets a grand total of two lines to himself across
the whole record (the not exactly taxing 'Oh baby what you do to me!' on 'Say
You'll Be Mine' plus the one he always sang on 'Just One Look') and stays in
the background throughout, unusual and uncharacteristic as that may be (after
all, remember Nash wrote 10/12ths of his last album as a Hollie, 'Butterfly').
But then also in the background are Tony Hicks (whose own harmony vocals, once
such a vital part of the Hollie sound, are heard even less often than that) and
Bobby Elliott (with perhaps the single greatest rock drummer of the 1960s
largely replaced by a drum machine), while even lead singer Allan Clarke isn't
exactly pushed to his limits. There's not one Hollie original at all on this
record remember not one!

So who does do anything on this curious record? Well,
in many ways it's a Paul Bliss solo album that just happens to feature some
guest mates, despite the fact that nobody outside the band has ever heard of
him (Paul's band had made two records in the late 1970s, but good luck finding
those - even Allan's and Terry's solo albums are easier to track down!) His
keyboard is the lynchpin of this record in a way that the guitars, bass and
drums just aren't and practically every song on this album is either keyboard
or piano based. Given that we're talking the mid-1980s here, that's a shame,
despite his occasionally excellent playing (such as 'Someone Else's Eyes'):
'What Goes Around...' is as much a product of its era as 'Bus Stop' and 'On A
Carousel' were, only of course the era is far far worse to modern ears. Bliss
also writes half of the album's songs, which is a bit like The Rolling Stones
getting back together again and 'sacking' Jagger/Richards in favour of some new
kid they met in the canteen (or, better yet, someone with limited success such
as Bill Wyman). However, Paul is undoubtedly the album's hero too: not all his
songs are great but they are the highlights, with the throbbing pop of
'Casualty', the spooky harmonies of 'Say You'll Be Mine', the Motown stomp of
'I Got What I Want', the sarcastic forced smile of 'Having A Good Time' and
especially the dreamy romance of 'Someone Else's Eyes' by far the album's most
Holliesy moments. You can imagine the 1960s Hollies recording all of these
songs, just not in this way with digital drums and squeaky keyboards largely
covering up those golden harmonies. Bliss is a talented writer, it's a shame to
see him relegated to pretty colours behind Justin Hayward and John Lodge these
days (although he did leave a few years back to become a TV theme writer I'm
pleased to say). No Clarke-Hicks-Nash admittedly, so it's a bit silly having
anyone else when those three are still in the band, but a good writer all the
same.

There's an intriguing theme running through Bliss'
songs and a handful of the other cover song choices here too which makes even
more sense of the 1980s-is-just-like-the-1960s vibe: the threat of nuclear
annihilation. Now CSN in general and Nash in particular had always been
outspoken about nuclear arms in public (Graham had even organised the 'No Nukes!'
concerts in 1979) but till now his feelings on the matter had resulted in just
one song, 'Barrel Of Pain' from his third solo record 'Earth and Sky'. It seems
unlikely to be a subject of conversation between band members who'd never
really shared their old partner's liberal views before (though there's a nice
bunch of anti-war songs from the 1969-1971 period just after Nash had left the
band and The Hollies were as influenced by CSN as everyone else was). And yet
here it is: 'Casualty' has the narrator a victim of 'circumstance' - love as it
happens, but suffering from some unseen disaster all the same with several
lines that could be taken both ways ('I never saw the warning signs until it
was too late!') 'Take My Love and Run' is about hiding and escaping from some
off-screen destruction. 'Something Ain't Right' may reply with the very Hollies
rejoinder '...But that ain't gonna let me stop without a fight', but still
something here feels 'wrong' with the world as it is. 'If The Lights Go Out'
was written by Mike Batt during the union disputes of the late 1970s which led
to copious power cuts and yet it's about something wider than that: if the
lights go out in the whole world it won't matter because we die in each other's
arms. 'Stop! In The Name Of Love', the Supremes cover, is clearly about love
and only love - at least until Nash finally got involved in something (the
music video) and turned it into an anti-nuclear crusade (goodness only knows
what messers Clarke, Hicks and Elliott made of that!) Finally, after a bit of a
gap for love songs (including an updated version of Hollie breakthrough hit
'Just One Look', which is as pure 1983 as the original was pure 1963) we end
with 'Having A Good Time' which opens with the line 'They say the world must
end somehow...' This is kind of the album theme though: rather than weep about
the imminent destruction of the Earth by two superpowers, or protest the fact
that two idiots we should never have trusted ended up with that power as CSN
would have done in days of old, The Hollies get ready to party. Because if
we're going to go then at least we should all go happy, embracing life as it
used to be. That bit of 'What Goes Around...' is very Hollies (particularly the
early Nash era Hollies, something that had been left behind as the band got
sadder in the 1970s) and the part of this album that works best; but alas the
material isn't always as strong as the concept and much of side two doesn't fit
that concept anyway.

So is 'What Goes Around...' any good? Well bits so
it are. 'Casualty' has a killer pop chorus and a likeable, hapless narrator who
probably stood outside A&R chatting up girls at a bus stop with his
umbrella. The doom-laden stuttering cover of 'Take My Love and Run' (first
tried out Nash-less as a flop single at the Batt sessions and actually slightly
ruined here by being cut down in length, but they don't change it enough here
to ruin it so no matter) is powerful in a way the rest of the album isn't but
most of the past Hollies catalogue is; brave and ominous underneath it's
catchiness. 'Stop! In The Name Of Love' takes a song everyone knows backwards
and gives it a kick up the backside - admittedly a 1980s kick, so it's not what
it could have been, but this new arrangement combined with a Clarkey vocal makes
for a better idea on record than it could ever have seemed on paper. The
re-make of 'Just One Look' is an interesting before and after shot that shows
up how good the original song was. And 'Someone Else's Eyes' is pure bliss (in
both meanings of the word), soaring away on lyrics of guilt and worry combined
with music of regret and longing and gorgeous Hollies harmonies that, here at
least, sound every bit as great as they ever did in 1968. For those reasons
alone 'What Goes Around...' should come around to your Hollie collection one
day, assuming you can find it (thankfully that's easier than it used to be
thanks to this set's first ever CD release which came as late as 2006 with
B-side 'Musical Pictures' as a pretty B-side, though even this disc isn't exactly
common). However there's no avoiding the Sandy-coloured, lace-shirt wearing,
long cool elephant in a black dress sitting in the corner: this really doesn't
sound much like The Hollies, good or bad. It really doesn't sound anywhere near
as strong or as meaningful as a reunion album with Graham Nash should sound
like. 'What Goes Around...' picked the wrong era to come round to, turning back
the clock to 1963 when The Hollies were a cute covers pop band instead of 1968
when they were as great and original a writing act as anybody else around in
their era. 'What Goes Around...' isn't bad by any means and is a big
improvement on the pointless task of 'Buddy Hully' covers and a majority of the
Mike Batt recordings (though I'd sit through anything to get my hands on
'Soldier's Song', admittedly). But if you're not missing it - and it sold so
poorly, then and now, that you almost certainly are - then you're not missing
out on all that much, really. Sometimes school reunions just promise too much
and teach you that you really can't turn back the clock.

It's a brave band that begins their new
make-or-break album, released three albums after the last, with lines like 'a
victim of my own circumstance, a helpless case that never stood a chance...'
Though actually 'Casualty' is one of the better attempts here at updating the
old Hollie sound with an impressive array of keyboards and sound effects that
almost makes you nostalgic for the 1980s (believe me, this isn't a feeling that
happens often). The Hollies enter the picture little by little, with Clarke
taking the first half of the first verse, Nash joining in alongside for the
second half and Hicks for the chorus, which is actually a new technique for The
Hollies (where they either all sing or go solo). It's quite an effective one
too, although like much of the album to come it's a shame that The Hollies are
in the background of their own album, with keyboards, a synth-bass and a
so-not-Bobby-Elliott-it-hurts drum part taking centre stage. In terms of
songwriting 'Casualty' isn't anything of the sort and is one of Paul Bliss'
better and more Holliesy efforts that returns to the many songs about cheating
and suspicion that fills up their 1970s work. The narrator was driving home
when he thinks he saw his wife with another man, causing him to crash the car.
The fact that he wakes up in traction at the local hospital says much about the
condition of his marriage too with some clever lines that fit both strands of
the story ('I must have lost direction, a simple hit and run', 'Out of control
on one-way street'). Though most of this song is pure pop and very much in the
breathless-enthusiasm style of the very early period Hollies the middle eight
adds some much needed emotion as we switch to a minor key and Clarkey wakes up
and realises that he's been taken for a 'ride' and that he has a broken heart
to nurse along with his broken bones. A strong, solid opener that might have
been a masterpiece had it had more Hollies involvement in it; believe it or not
this is about as much Clarke-Nash interaction as you're going to hear for the
full record and even that is rather thin on the ground here. Shouldabeen the
single.

'What Goes Around...' is one of those middle-aged-reunion
albums that sag a little in the middle, putting the best at the beginning and
at the end. 'Take My Love and Run' was first released as a single in 1981 which
was one of the band's poorest sellers despote being one of their better 1981
releases (it didn't chart anywhere - and remember even the shameful 'Wiggle
That Wotsit' was a top twenty hit in New Zealand). Rather than re-record it,
the band simply edit out a few of the things they felt didn't work (the false
ending, the sad 'take my take my' that follows and the final verse of
wo-a-woa-a-o-ahs), which was a shame because actually they did. Nash also added
a subtle harmony part alongside new-boy Alan Coates' part on the record too (Coates'
only part on the record, sadly). So what makes this single stand out? Well,
it's still recognisably Hollies (with more harmonies than most of this record)
but it's Hollies as we've never heard them before - vaguely threatening and
creepy until everything suddenly gets turned on its head during a typically
bright and breezy chorus. Like many a 1970s Hollies fan it's about break-up and
divorce, the narrator finally giving up on a relationship that's lasted way too
long. Vowing 'you won't do this to me again!', the narrator is still in love to
tell his lover to take his love and remember him but to get out before they
both get hurt beyond repair. This is how 1980s pop songs should always have
sounded, using the old 'Human League' trick of taking the most raw emotional
warm feelings in the music and treating them to ice-cold alienation with the
performance on the bank of unfeeling, uncaring synths. There's something
slightly 'off' about the keyboards that works well in the confines in the track
too (has the original backing track been slowed down to give it a more fragile,
bitter feeling?) which I used to assume was because of my scratchy 45 single
(the instrumental B-side 'Driver' suffered from the same problem) but sounds
just as bad if not worse on CD. Though it's a shame there's so little for
anyone else to do on this track, Clarkey is brilliant excelling as he does with
kitchen sink dramas he can get his teeth into. Listen out too for the final
repeat of the line 'get out before the morning sun' when all three singing
Hollies reach up instead of down, an old Hollie trick they hadn't made with
Nash in fifteen years.

Alas this is where the record starts going downhill
slightly. 'Say You'll Be Mine' should, on paper, be vintage paper. There are
harmonies nearly all the way through, it's an energetic pop song based on real
emotion and feeling (love basically) and this is the one track on the album
with Tony Hicks guitar and Bobby Elliott drums. The problem is it's unmemorable
in a way few Hollies tracks have ever been before, with only the unexpected
minor key change before the choruses ('Why don't you say the words I want to
hear?') catching the ear. Paul Bliss' second song on the album isn't as
original as his others, with a dragging chorus that's too slow and dreary
that's repeated way too many times. Lyrically, too, this song of devotion
sounds like so many others, with the narrator trying to open his heart and
longing for his lover to match him with every compliment he makes. There are,
though some nice lines that makes this song sound as if it was 'real' at some
stage: 'You don't have to tell the truth' admits Clarke's love-struck narrator,
'But I want you to!' At least Tony and Bobby are clearly on here too, with very
characteristic flourishes from both men and there are full harmonies too, but
typically for this album both are lower in the mix than the bank of keyboards
and the busy synth-bass which is about as far removed from Eric's soul and
Bernie's melodicism as it's possible to get. For a new 1980s band this would
still sound pretty good - but this is The Hollies, why settle for a recording
that sounds like everybody else?

'Something Ain't Right' - you could say that again.
The Hollies are way in the distance on track four, with Clarkey sounding as if
he's singing lead from down the end of a wind tunnel while the others are out
in the car park (maybe they were re-shooting the promo for 'Dear Eloise'
somewhere in Europe and avoiding all the parked cars?) There's a nice song
here, this time from the pen of songwriting team Allen and Byrne, but it's been
lost in translation somewhere and never really connects with the listener.
Lyrically it's another one of those songs about a relationship turning sour,
with a tale of 'unequal love' that Nash will write the definitive song about
for CSN in 1994. The narrator has put everything into his relationship but it's
not been matched and it keeps playing on his mind - should he go all out and
declare his love or back off and accept that it's over? The last verse seems to
find redemption (she makes the first move and rings him up!) but it's all so
non-committal and leaves him 'holding on to nothing at all'. The Hollies are
good at melancholy and this song is definitely melancholy, but the arrangement
given here makes it sound more like one of those up-tempo happy pop numbers
like 'Bus Stop' et al. You half expect the band to have a party at the end as
the driving riffs keep playing (this is about the only song on the album based
around guitar not keyboards, though it's more a weak-kneed Eagles riff than a
knock-out 'Long Cool Woman' style hook), but in the end the narrator has done
nothing about his situation and feels as disconnected at the end as he did at
the beginning. Another worryingly unmemorable performance from a group who are
usually the most memorable of bands.

'If The Lights Go Out' is a Mike Batt song discussed
at the 1980 sessions but seemingly not recorded till here (when it was released
early as the B-side of 'Stop! In The Name Of Love' with a number of differences
- most notably the phased/echoed vocals that didn't quite come off). It's no
'Soldier's Song', but it's better than 'Let Her Go Down' and the other treacly
rubbish that should have been left with The Wombles. An ear-catching opening is
particularly strong and sums up the yin and yang of Hollies styles: 'They say
the world must end somehow...' sighs a mournful Clarke before the band bounce
back in on a noisy upbeat chorus that runs '...I think they're wrong! Don't
worry your life away!' The idea of a couple spending the last few hours on
earth in each other's arms, still totally in love, is one that ended up in a
lot of pop songs in this era (Roger Waters wrote a whole film score around the
idea for 'Where The Wind Blows' this same year), the love and passion and
warmth contrasting with the jealousy and ugliness and destruction of nuclear
annihilation, juxtaposing the real feelings between real people everywhere with
the callousness and heartlessness of politicians (something tells me Nash
picked this song...) Unfortunately having opened the song with the promise of
nuclear war, nothing happens for the rest of the track. After that ear-catching
opening there's nothing else to say, with as many different ways of saying 'I
want to be with you when the world burns' as you can imagine. Even a Hicks
guitar solo sounds less 'real' and more window-dressing than it normally would,
while - dare we say it - the Clarke-Hicks-Nash vocals sound slightly flat.
Still, if the lights had to go out on The Hollies at all, most fans would
rather we get a run of half-way decent tracks like this than the 'staying
power' of the later line-up...

'Stop! In The Name Of Love' really shouldn't work at
all. The Supremes' original was so famous that there have been very few covers
of this song and though The Hollies had a go at covering The Four Tops' 'Reach
Out I'll Be There' in concert, Motown was never really their style. And yet
Hammond-Dozier-Holland's song gets new energy (and a whole new meaning if
you've seen the video, with more Nash warnings against nuclear war). Clarke is
superb as he pours his heart out in a far more 'real' way than the
always-preening Diana Ross and there are some excellent touches scattered
across this arrangement. Hicks' double-tracked guitar solo is spot-on, the
faster pace really suits the urgency of the lyrics, the sudden cymbal crash to
emphasis the word 'stop!' is so obvious you wonder why Berry Gordy didn't think
of it fore the original and the moment of silence where the 'stop' should be after
the final 'Tear it apart...in the name of love!' is very clever. Does it beat
the original? Well, that's the difference between people copying and
originating (and forget what you may have read elsewhere, The Hollies were
creators once they hit their stride, not copycats). Back in 1965 no one had
ever heard anything quite like this song, even in the Supremes' catalogue. This
song doesn't play it cool (even though Diana sings it that way), it's
desperate, carnal and deeply emotional and just happens to come along with a
catchy chorus that keeps things in check. I would say it's the best Supremes
song out there but that's kind of obvious - a good half of their singles
catalogue are poor re-makes of this song anyway. In 1983 though we've heard
lots of songs like that one, though as it happens none for a long time (the
1980s was closer in style to Motown cool than 1960s pop energy and emotion).
Much as The Hollies tweak this track, change the theme, bring out the very real
grief that's been hiding in the song all these years and replace the original
Motown horns with keyboards, they're always going to come off second best
simply because they don't have the shock factor anymore. Yes, even with a video
where the world blows up (a brave move for the time actually - we're a year
before Frankie's 'Two Tribes' here and this is a band who want a hit and a
peaceful life; even CSN won't get this explicitly anti-war in video for a few
more years yet and in fact haven't made many videos at all just yet).

It's
still the weakest of the three Hollies singles featuring the word 'Stop!',
however.

'I Got What I Want' is kinda forgettable, which is
odd because the central riff is also so nagging and insistent it's the first
thing that runs through my head whenever I think of this record. In many ways
Bliss and his pal Steve Kipner's song is just a re-write of 'I Take What I
Want' (as covered by The Hollies on their 1966 'Would You Believe?' album)
without anywhere near as much energy, twinned with 'I Can't Let Go' without the
rock-solid bass line. Clarke sings double-tracked for the only time on the
record and just about gets through the song in one piece (though it's a close
call at times), but the lyrics he sings are confusing. Basically it's one long song
about how the narrator's never ever going to fall out of love because it took
him so long to get the girl of his dreams, inspiring one of the album's better
Tony Hicks solos along the way. And that's about it - he wouldn't sell his girl
for any amount of money (I should hope not!), nothing's going to change
Clarkey's mind, it's all water off a duck's back, etc etc. All this thinking
out loud is interrupted every so often, seemingly at random, by a chorus by a
flat-sounding chorus that intones over and over 'I got what I want, nobody can
take it away!' Admittedly things get better for a middle eight ('Always got
what I wanted...'), but even that is over in the blink of an eye. Frustratingly
this arguably weakest moment on the record seem to be the template The Hollies
returned to most across the 1980s: long after Nash leaves the band (again!) the
others will still be recording drippy keyboard-based songs like this that
'beep' ('Bam! Bam!') at key moments in the chorus. Thankfully most of the later
Hollies songs (many of them originals) will be strong enough to absorb the
inherent silliness of this, but 'I Got What I Want' has too much stuff in it that
fans don't want at all.

I'm not quite sure what I think about the new-look
'Just One Look', recorded twenty years after the last time around. Like 'Stop!'
it's impressively, courageously different and works well slowed down from the
hysterics and longing of teenager-dom to soft sighing reflective middle-age.
The replacement of the old very 1963 guitar accompaniment with some very 1983
keyboards is also a sweet touch and the new riff Paul Bliss teases out of his
keyboard is perhaps his best playing on the record. Throw in the unexpected coda
that falls to a yearning minor key (where the original just faded) and you have
yourself a re-recording that's better than most and not quite the travesty fans
feared when they first heard that The Hollies were doing this. However, there
is a sense here that the band have thrown the baby out with the bath-water. The
whole point of the original was that the narrator was so utterly, totally,
overwhelmingly in love that he was obsessed (a good hook for the Nash-ear Hollies,
from 'I'm Alive' and 'I Can't Let Go' on down) and the band played it that way,
This version is more like Doris Troy's original, sung with little passion and a
curious kind of nonchalant shrug. That would make more sense if the backing was
heading in that direction too, but it isn't - if anything the synth-bass is
even more energetic and urgent than Eric Haydock's part on the original and the
chirpy keyboard riff is more 'yippee' than 'yawn'. While Clarkey sounds strong,
Nash and Hicks both sound a little flimsy and rushed, Nash's solo middle eight
('I thought I was dreaming but I was wrong, yeah yeah yeah!') not a patch on
his aggressive first go twenty years earlier. Like 'Stop! In The Name Of Love'
the result is a fairly impressive piece of recycling, that still feels slightly
null and void and faintly pointless because, even if this re-recording had been
note-perfect it could never have improved on the original. The track selection
feels a little random too: while 'Just One Look' was the band's biggest hit up
to that point in time, that was more because The Hollies got lucky and chose a
week that didn't have Beatles and Stones singles out at the same time. Their
'real' breakthrough hit, when most people began to notice them, was 'Stay' - a
similarly fast-paced obsessive song which actually would have worked really
well slowed down to a more mature older feel (which would have worked well
changed from a 'love me!' vibe to a 'stay with me!' one). A re-working of first
single 'Ain't That Just Like Me' might have been fun too, though the band were
too embarrassed by it even in 1963 to perform it live...

Thankfully the album still has an ace up its sleeve
with 'Someone Else's Eyes', a Paul Bliss song that's tailor made for The
Hollies. For the only time on the record we get a glimpse of what Nash might
have sounded like had he hung around long enough for the band to mature into
their natural 1970s state as slow pretty balladeers. The sparing use of
harmonies works really well for once on this song about the narrator yearning
for unity and Clarke shines once again on a lead vocal he can properly get his
teeth into. The lyrics are gorgeous, a mixture of humble pleading for
forgiveness and tough assertion that things have got to change, the narrator
desperate to keep his lover with him because he knows if she leaves him for
another they'll both be hurt - no one else's eyes can ever show her greater
love than he has for her already, so why go 'searchin' (that's another old song
The Hollies could have updated!) 'There never seemed to be a time for
explanation' Clarke sighs, worried that things have moved so fast he's been
taking his lover for granted and desperate not to let the one love of his life
go. It's also the best place to hear the Clarke-Nash vocals fitting together
(though Hicks is barely present the whole song). A typically album-strong
middle eight is the icing on the cake as Clarke stops cooing and starts
roaring: 'After all this time I thought you knew me better, never believed that
I would ever see you go!' Admittedly this song isn't quite as note-perfect as
similar Hollies bands of regret and longing ('Love Is The Thing' from 1976's
'Write On' is a good starting place), mainly thanks to the 1980s trappings: the
synth solo is awkward and insincere, painfully adrift in the middle of this
song (it seems odd that Bliss should misunderstand his own work in this way)
and while there are less period trappings here than on the rest of the album
there are still far too many once the songs gets up to speed. But that's
nit-picking really: as the narrator tries to explain, why bother searching for
total perfection when near-perfection is here before you and it feels oh so
good? The highlight of the album and a candidate for the best Hollies song of
the 1980s (though 'Soldier's Song' 'Purple Rain' 'Sine Silently' and 'Too Many
Hearts Get Broken' all come close too).

So are we 'Having A Good Time?' Yes and no - the
uneven-ness of this album doesn't quite allow you to wallow into a state of
truly enjoying it and true to form the album rocks out on an uncomfortably
messy and bland farewell. Bobby Elliott is back on drums again (for only the
second time?) but he's overshadowed by noisy prancing keyboards and a Clarke
vocal that's intended to be raw but simply shows up how badly he's beginning to
lose his voice already without any studio trickery to cover it (Allan leaves
the band for this reason in 1999, though thankfully he still has a few
highlights to go yet). A tight, driving guitar riff deserves a better song to
cling on to than this, with an uncomfortable chorus that see-saws between bland
and silly and a chorus that sounds unfinished ('Are you having a good time?' reallt
doesn't rhyme with 'the story is always unwinding' however much Bliss and
Kipner want us to think that, while the chorus finale gets drawn out to
'Ti-i-i-i-i--i-i-i-i-i-ime' where the extra syllables should go, just to rub
the point in). The Hollies struggle to conjure up the party feelings the track
is aiming for and it's no surprise really - the chorus comes at the wrong
point; it's the only part of this lyric that isn't morbid and dreading the
worst. 'I can't see the future' runs the lyrics, 'So I don't know if this will
last but, hey, it's worth a try!' Hmm that's not the most romantic thing The
Hollies have ever said and the choruses cry that 'here and now it doesn't
matter' is instantly undercut by verse after verse about trying to predict the
future. It's also, like 'Casualty', a brave bordering on foolish 'farewell'
note to leave us on: the world is about to blow up so who cares? The Hollies'
history ever so nearly ended with this track (it took a lot of persuasion for
EMI to take the band back and only the brilliance of 'Too Many Hearts Get
Broken' convinces them, while WEA were so shocked that this album only making
#90 in the States (which was still the band's best since the self-titled Clarke
reunion album in 1974) and missing the charts completely in the UK that they
quietly shredded the band's contract. It would have been a terrible way of
saying goodbye.

Thankfully The Hollies will half-rescue their
tattered reputation with a strong run of singles across the rest of the 1980s
and into the 1990s (we'll ignore 'The Woman I Love' if you promise you will
too) which, thanks to the fact they never appeared on album and only exist on
CD on the end of compilations, will come as a shock to many of you. Sadly,
though, they won't make another album until as late as 2006 and 'Staying Power'
and 'Then, Now and Always' are about as close to The Hollies sound as The Spice
Girls are to The Supremes. Nash leaves the band again pretty much as soon as he
could, saying that once again he'd 'outgrown' The Hollies, even though he
seemed genuinely enthusiastic before the album came out to lukewarm sales and
reviews (though he fits in an American Hollie tour first, proudly showing his
'first band' off to his home audience - it was released on CD as 'Archive
Alive!' in the late 1990s but good luck finding that, it's even harder to pin
down than this album is). The patient Alan Coates finally gets a full-time gig
replacing him and is about as good as any replacement for singers as talented
as Nash and Terry Sylvester can be (he also rivals Tony as the band's song
picker of choice, with the covers of Nils Lofgren's 'Sine Silently' and
Prince's 'Purple Rain' both his ideas). Paul Bliss leaves with Nash and is
replaced by Denis Haines, while The Hollies finally get round to adding a
permanent bass player after three years without one by adding Steve Stroud in
1984. Clarkey finally leaves in 1999, retiring after a great though brief stint
as a radio documentary presenter. And yet still Tony and Bobby soldiered on,
adding first Move star Carl Wayne and later musicals singer Peter Howarth in
the new millennium. As with 'What Goes Around...' it's all a brave attempt to
sound contemporary that kind of half-works. However, much like this 1983 album,
it is perhaps a change too far without the immediacy and originality of the
days of old. But then few bands are ever lucky enough to last as long as The
Hollies, who beat The Stones to the charts by a matter of months and thus can
claim to be the second longest continually performing band from the 1960s (and
they made way more albums than the first longest, The Searchers, to boot). 'What
Goes Around...' isn't the best place to hear why the band have lasted that long
and in many ways is the closest to a minor released the band ever made - at
least in the 20th century and without the dreaded 'Hollies Sing Dylan' or 'Hollies
Sing Holly' moniker on the cover. However, like all Hollies releases, it has its
moments and for 'Someone Else's Eyes' 'Take My Love and Run' and - if you're
feeling generous - 'Casualty' and 'Stop! In The Name Of Love' alone, it's an album
well worth tracking down if you can, as a curio at least.

Other Hollies-related articles from this website you might be interested in reading:

'Stay With The Hollies' (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-hollies-stay-with-hollies-1964.html

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About Me

Born in the nexus point of Britain (well, the Midlands anyway), the author has swapped the concrete paradise of Stafford for …the concrete paradise of Ormskirk/Skelmersdale.

Along the way he got a music GCSE and A level (including a national award for his composing work) and music theory grades 3-5, so he should at least vaguely know what he is talking about. He was also awarded an English and History degree from St Martin’s College in Carlisle for his research work and ability to make 3000-word essays quadruple in length overnight (Carlisle remains his spiritual home, whenever it isn’t raining – which is, sadly, most of the time).

Journalism wise his highlights have been writing possibly the worlds last article on Gene Pitney (which was due to have been published two days after he died), enthusing over debut singles by now semi-famous artists like The Editors, Feeder and Newton Faulkner and – the most worthy of all – told the world that Chico out of X Factor was an idiot with a loud voice and nobody should buy his single. Of course, everybody did and it made number one. His artistic crest is the following description of a record: ‘two parts melodious funk to one part Theolonious Monk’!

When not writing his past-times include moaning about continuity points on sci-fi programmes such as Dr Who, Blake's 7, Sapphire and Steel and Timeslip, vainly supporting Alonso through thick and thin in F1 racing, cursing at the Coalition for their sheer incompetence and lying down in a darkened room recovering from chronic fatigue attacks.

The author has spent approximately 31 and a half of his 32 years listening to music in some form or another (he was asleep for the other 6 months before you ask) and has been officially declared ‘monkeynuts’ after spending three months working at the Skills Exchange in Skelmersdale (which seemed like a lifetime). This website - which started off at its 'old' home at www.alansalbumarchives.moonfruit.com - is now six years old, has covered over 450 albums by various artists and has received in total more than 280,000 hits. You can hear the author's music, see his youtube videos (starring Max The Singing Dog) and read more of his awful puns and jokes about the Spice Girls by checking out the 'links' pages further down the site...

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(If you are a millionaire with cash to spare then you can donate any amount to this site via Paypal by clicking on the ‘help!’ button. However please note – I don’t expect any of you reading this to give anything, you already more than fulfil your side of the bargain by reading what I write. Money is tight for everyone at the moment (except Coalition politicians and bankers!) and I’d feel awful if anyone gave their hard-earned coins to the AAA when they could be spending it on something really useful and life-changing(like one of the CDs we’ve reviewed!) I am only offering this service because someone asked me on the comments page if I would set one up and there will be no extra features or special article to those who pay money, so don’t feel obliged to pay. I will also run this site as long as I can health-wise oblivious to how much money I make, so don’t feel you have to keep us going!)

Hello and welcome to our fourth special edition of our newsletter. Our past special editions have looked at AAA compilations (News and ...

List of links for main reviews per band

Please click here to read more articles from 'back issues' of album reviews from News, Views and Music, which are listed alphabetically by band and chronologically by album (please note this section is a pain to update so we only do it every so often – have a look bottom right at the ‘100 most recent articles’ if you’re after more to read!) Please note also that we still have about 100 records we haven’t covered yet – we should be finished this humungous project in about two years (depending on how many more Neil Young puts out between now and 2017!!!) so please be patient with us if we haven't got to your favourite yet (although if we haven’t and you really want to read it, then why now leave a comment and let us know and we’ll move it up the pile!) Please also see below this list for 'top five'/'top ten' articles. Happy reading - and, err, sorry about the eye strain!!! Updated as of April 2017